Liam snorted a laugh. “I couldn’t care less about her feelings. I wasn’t even sure she actually had them until I saw her mooning over you.”
Aidon’s throat suddenly felt suspiciously dry. Damn desert heat. “She wasn’tmooningover me. She simply knows how to wield her feminine wiles to get what she wants.”
“Sure,” Liam answered easily. “If that’s what helps you sleep at night.”
That was the problem, Aidon thought to himself. He couldn’t sleep at all as of late. Not with Dauphine on a mat nearby, her steady breathing a rhythm he found himself subconsciously trying to match before his anger and guilt and disgust took hold.
He refused to let his bleeding heart eclipse his brain. Not again.
They are not the same.
Zuri’s voice was louder now, and though he trusted his mother more than anyone in this world save for Josie, he could not bring himself to listen.
It did not matter that he’d been right in his assumption of Dauphine’s motivations. It did not matter that he’d learned hehadn’t truly lost all of his instincts. He still hadn’t caught on to her betrayal until after it had happened, until after it had unfolded right in front of him.
Maybe they weren’t the same, the betrayals.
But the wounds…the wounds ached as if they were.
38
This trip to Sitya felt far faster. Perhaps that was because this time, Aya wasn’t hooded and locked in the back of a prisoner wagon. They didn’t yet trust her with her own horse, so she rode behind Evie, but the fresh air felt nice on her face.
At least they hadn’t put her with Lorna. She understood why the Vaguer joined them, but why they’d decided to drag the Saj along, Aya didn’t know. It certainly wasn’t for her own benefit.
She tried not to think of the last time she shared a horse, tried not to remember the feel of Will at her back, or how his warmth had been something anchoring and safe on that journey back from the cave somewhere in the Blood-Red Mountains of Trahir.
Will is dead, she reminded herself firmly. And if he wasn’t, he soon would be by Hyacinth’s orders.
She was glad of it.
Because five thousand Kakos troops now marched toward Sitya.
Aya glanced over her shoulder and took in the lines of soldiers following behind them. She hadn’t been able to see how far back they stretched as they’d made their way throughthe mountains, and now, with the thick tree cover of the forest they’d been enclosed in for two days, it was even harder to count them. But she did what she could.
At least five thousand. And that said nothing of the troops Gregor had sent ahead.
King Gregor and Evie remained careful with the information Aya received. It had been over a week before they left that hells-crafted palace that existed in the gap, and in those days, she’d done little more than eat and try to regain her strength by running shackled through the steep slopes with General Dav at her back. Butthis—the size of their army—they could not hide.
Gregor had seen her taking in the rows, ready and waiting at the top of the gap, when they’d left the palace.
“The remainder of our army, save for those in Milsaio,” he’d remarked knowingly. “We’ve sent the first lines ahead to join those stationed in Sitya.”
“Why not send them all?” Aya had asked.
“Nothing destroys the spirit more than giving it hope only for it to be ripped away,” Gregor had responded before steering his horse to the front of their caravan.
He was right, and the thought followed Aya through the mountains and into the dark, dank woods. Even still, it seemed overly dramatic for the king, even for Evie, who loved a statement more than most.
Aya believed he’d sent troops ahead, she even believed he was intent on giving the Midlands armies the illusion of a chance at victory only to rip it away with the arrival of the rest of his forces.
But she did not believe that this was solely about defending their stronghold in Sitya. Moving his troops like this was a strategic choice, one that hinted at what was to come. Kakos wasn’t simply marching on Sitya.
They were marching on therealm.
The war may have started with the first attack onthe Midlands, but it hadn’t, not truly. Sitya, Milsaio, Dunmeaden…
Those were mere trials—experiments meant to test their powers and perhaps even trick the realm into thinking there was hope to be had. And perhaps at one point, there had been. But now that a demigod had entered the fray, Kakos had exactly what they needed to rally their forces and make their move.
